Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice.

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the origins of the Left-Right divide by examining the views of the men who best represented each side of that debate at its outset: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. In a groundbreaking exploration of the roots of our political order, Levin shows that American partisanship originated in the debates over the French Revolution, fueled by the fiery rhetoric of these ideological titans.

The Conscience of a Conservative

When it was first published, The Conscience of a Conservative reignited the American conservative movement and made Barry Goldwater a political star. It influenced countless conservatives in the United States and helped to lay the foundation for the Reagan Revolution in 1980. Just as vital today as it was then, this book addresses many topics that could be torn from today's headlines.

God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom

This is the book that launched William F. Buckley, Jr.'s career. As a young, recent Yale graduate, he took on Yale's professional and administrative staffs, citing their hypocritical diversion from the tenets on which the institution was built. Yale was founded on the belief that God exists, and thus that virtue and individualism represent immutable cornerstones of education. However, when Buckley wrote this scathing expose, the institution had made an about face.

How to Be a Conservative

What does it mean to be a conservative in an age so sceptical of conservatism? How can we live in the presence of our 'canonized forefathers' at a time when their cultural, religious and political bequest is so routinely rejected? With soft left-liberalism as the dominant force in Western politics, what can conservatives now contribute to public debate that will not be dismissed as pure nostalgia?

The Road to Serfdom

Originally published in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has profoundly influenced many of the world's great leaders, from Orwell and Churchill in the mid-'40s, to Reagan and Thatcher in the '80s. The book offers persuasive warnings against the dangers of central planning, along with what Orwell described as "an eloquent defense of laissez-faire capitalism".

The Closing of the American Mind

In one of the most important books of our time, Allan Bloom, a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago and a noted translator of Plato and Rousseau, argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burke’s opinion on whether France’s new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious of certain tendencies of the Revolution from the start and perceived that the revolutionaries were actually subverting the true "social order". Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world.

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West. American churches are beset by a rapidly secularizing culture, the departure of young people, and watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicates, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age.

Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism

In Rediscovering Americanism, Mark R. Levin revisits the founders' warnings about the perils of overreach by the federal government and concludes that the men who created our country would be outraged and disappointed to see where we've ended up. Levin returns to the impassioned question he's explored in each of his best-selling books: How do we save our exceptional country? Because our values are in such a precarious state, he argues that a restoration to the essential truths on which our country was founded has never been more urgent.

Democracy in America

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.

The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism

Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges. No wonder, then, that Americans - and the politicians who represent them - are overwhelmingly nostalgic for a better time.

Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture

It's not your imagination: civilized human society is collapsing. Communities no longer work toward a common good; children are no longer our first priority; businesses no longer value hard work; arts and skills have been lost; and gender is decided by the individual, not biology. We cannot reverse national and global trends, says professor Anthony Esolen, but we can build communities that live up to humanity's promise and responsibility.

Witness

First published in 1952, Witness came on the heals of America's trial of the century, in which Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a full-standing member of the political establishment, of spying for the Soviet Union. In this penetrating philosophical memoir, Chambers recounts the famous case as well as his own experiences as a Communist agent in the United States, his later renunciation of communism, and his conversion to Christianity.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left

"Fascists", "Brownshirts", "jackbooted stormtroopers" - such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

What is life? What is my place in it? What choices do these questions obligate me to make? More than a half-century after it burst upon the intellectual scene - with roots that extend to the mid-19th century - Existentialism's quest to answer these most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom, life has continued to exert a profound attraction.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, teamed up to write this most convincing and readable guide, which illustrates the crucial link between Adam Smith's capitalism and the free society. They show how freedom has been eroded and prosperity undermined through the rapid growth of governmental agencies, laws, and regulations.

Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered

Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined into a living whole the private Burke and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time. He lucidly unfolds Burke's philosophy, showing how it revealed itself in concrete historical situations in the 18th century and how Burke, through his philosophy, "speaks to our age".

Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World

Known for his network of conservative websites that draws millions of readers everyday, Andrew Breitbart has one main goal: to make sure the "liberally biased" major news outlets in this country cover all aspects of a story fairly. Breitbart is convinced that too many national stories are slanted by the news media in an unfair way. In Righteous Indignation, Breitbart talks about the key issues that Americans face, how he has aligned himself with the Tea Party, and how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on.

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth.

Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties

Beginning with May 29, 1919, when photographs of the solar eclipse confirmed the truth of Einstein's theory of relativity, Johnson goes on to describe Freudianism, the establishment of the first Marxist state, the chaos of "Old Europe", the Arcadian 20s, and the new forces in China and Japan. Also discussed are Karl Marx, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Castro, Kennedy, Nixon, the '29 crash, the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, and the massive conflict of World War II.

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

In this book, which the author calls a "culmination of 30 years of work in the history of ideas", Sowell attempts to explain the ideological difference between liberals and conservatives as a disagreement over the moral potential inherent in nature. Those who see that potential as limited prefer to constrain governmental authority, he argues. They feel that reform is difficult and often dangerous, and put their faith in family, custom, law, and traditional institutions.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

In this devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years, Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes, but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and more.

Publisher's Summary

First published in 1953, this magnificent work will be remembered in ages to come as one of our century's most important legacies.

Written during a time when liberalism was heralded as the only political and intellectual tradition in America, there is no doubt that this book is largely responsible for the rise of conservatism as a viable and credible creed.

Kirk defines "the conservative mind" by examining such brilliant men as Edmund Burke, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Quincy Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Disraeli, Cardinal Newman, George Santayana, and finally, T.S. Eliot. Vigorously written, the book represents conservatism as an ideology born of sound intellectual traditions.

What the Critics Say

"Kirk is assured a place of prominence in the intellectual histories for helping to define the ethical basis of conservatism. He has tried to pull conservatism away from the utilitarian premises of liberalism, toward which conservatism often veers, toward a philosophy rooted in ethics and culture." (Wall Street Journal)

This book should be read/listened to - not for correctness - and not for conclusions - but because it broadens the background of almost every reader by presenting competing viewpoints to those propagated by academia and the popular media.

I have only "read" about a third of the book, but felt I needed to add to the comments available. The book addresses the contributions of significant individuals to conservative thought. It attempts to put their thoughts in the context of the times and lives of those people. I would not consider the book a collection of biographies. I believe that one of the purposes of the book is to create an interest in the reader that will lead him to go to the writings of the people mentioned. In my case it succeeded. A couple of other comments: Mr. Kirk tends not to define the terms that he uses, so the reader is left to find the definitions himself, or find the definition well after the term is first used. I also sometimes found the book a little hard to follow as I was listening, and had to refer to a text copy. I would definitely recommend the book, especially to those looking for the basis of conservative thought.

My favorite aspects of "The Conservative Mind" were the author's summaries of the beliefs of Burke and Macaulay. Indeed it is far easier to understand Burke and Macaulay by reading "The Conservative Mind" than it is to read the works of those authors directly.

I also like when Kirk points out repeatedly a fact that most people seem to hide themselves from today: that most people don't know or understand anything about government and therefore universal suffrage democracy backfires.

Kirk loses me with his insistence that protection of property rights cannot come about from people following the path of enlightened self-interest. Instead, Kirk insists that religious morality is the only way to convince people to protect property rights.

But, besides that one issue, the book is excellent and well worth reading.

What did you like best about The Conservative Mind? What did you like least?

The book is excellent, stimulating and informative -- even for a thoughtful liberal. Phillip Davidson, however, is not a good reader because there is too much dynamic variation in his speaking voice -- i.e., he will utter one syllable of a word clearly and distinctly, then drop his voice for the rest of the word or sometimes even the phrase, making it very difficult to catch what he is saying. A good reader needs more consistent volume and phrasing than Davidson has. Unfortunately, his reading voice is an impediment to the enjoyment of an otherwise excellent experience.

Religious people who already think political conservatism requires believing in god.

What could Russell Kirk have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Not opened with an interminable insistence that godless people can't possibly be conservatives.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I don't remember the performance. I just remember the subject matter.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Frustration. If it had been hard copy, maybe I could have flipped around looking for the meat. As it was he just went on and on insulting my lack of religion, without ever getting around to politics, until I gave up on it.

I was hoping for an introduction to Conservatism, and its under pinning philosophies. All that this book provides is an over wordy, and boring uncritical recitation of the lives of the author's heroes.